On the ninth day, Tadej Pogacar rested much of his creation. Deployed at the head of the pack while his angels flew toward him, the leader of the Tour left the work to mortals. In the alpine Swiss valleys, from a Saturday film so neat and spectacular, and wonderful asphalt roads, the protagonists were the secondary of the Tour, ignored until now. From his flesh and his bones and his heart the cycling is made. And a little bag of ice cream on the back to beat the heat.
The first of the so-called mountain stages, two first-class ports close to 1,500 meters, was won in Châtel, on the other side of the border, downhill by 29-year-old Bob Jungels from Luxembourg, pedaling a Matt Damon, according to his many fans who were happy about his victory celebrate the first in two years with the French Ag2r and emphasize that it at least adds some beauty to the race. But the savvy fans say yes that the winner of Liège 2018 will be very handsome, but that he is also very stubborn, like the runners of yore who, after hitting the ball with a good signature, only the expectations and that Salary have fulfilled the year your contract ended. His victory somewhat heals the bitterness of his team, who arrived at the Tour excited at the idea of putting their Australian O’Connor at the top and were devastated two days later and a couple of crashes in between. hopeless.
Ensuring the willingness to fight was Thibaut Pinot, the Frenchman who, at the age of 32, was tired of not being able to deal with the tension that crushes and depresses those trying to win the Tour and failing to get to his starting point return spectacular beginnings in fearless climbers. Finishing fourth, he won the applause of the French fans, so hungry, nostalgic for a forgotten glory, deeply in love with this profile of the runner, the defeated fighter.
Pinot didn’t even finish second, despite getting so close on the final climb that it almost touched and scared the Luxemburger, a rider of class and strength who wasn’t just handsome. Two Spaniards, Jonathan Castroviejo and Carlos Verona, men of the team and by profession, who for a day did not look back, worried about their leaders at Ineos and Movistar, took their breath away, looked ahead, thought of them, a beautiful reward for their work. Both, like two other experienced Spaniards, Ion Izagirre and Luis León Sánchez, and these four make up 44.44% of the total Spanish peloton, nine, this Tour, made the break of 21. Izagirre exhausted himself at work, so Geschke . his partner on the Cofidis, dressed in polka dots, and Luis León couldn’t do much, but Castroviejo and Verona calculated too much, measuring their strength and the movements of Jungels and Pinot and moving determined but late. They narrowly missed the Luxembourger, leaving the Basque in second place, 22 seconds behind Jungels. “I almost never get a chance to be on the run, I’ve spent too much, I’ve worked hard all week,” says Castroviejo, who is committed to his commitments to Thomas and Yates every day but one. “Jungels needed a lot of time over a few kilometers and I had the legs to win but I couldn’t. And I’m angry about that.” The counters keep turning. There are already 79 stages of the Tour without a Spanish victory; 105 count the big three, Vuelta, Giro and Tour. At least Enric Mas, always in front, saw, like one of his rivals, Vlasov, retiring a few more seconds in the heat, and another, the Colombian Dani Martínez, possible leader of Ineos, 16 minutes.
Pogacar, a slave to his strength and vitality, is in no position to ever go off screen. In the final sprint on the track, he manages to finish fifth, no less. When asked why he does these things, a sprint that earned him a bonus of 4 seconds at Lausanne and 3 seconds at Châtel over everyone except Vingegaard, who was glued to his bike, the Slovenian replies ex officio, “for work from thanking my team all day, the strongest team of the tour”, and with a soul. “I like to sprint,” he says, “because when I started I was such a tadpole that I was always beaten by the advanced and I insisted on learning to sprint to beat them.” And Vingegaard, small as he is, will surely think he’s sincere. Wasn’t he, the Danish mountaineer who, instead of climbing mountains that aren’t in his country, braved the wind and got stronger as a result, also a little boy who got beat up by his teammates on the soccer team? Both are now the giants of the tour.
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